Terry Pegula

With Terry and Kim Pegula officially taking over the team, the whole organization from top to bottom is going to be evaluated. However, with the way the season is going the Pegulas may have no choice but to clean house.

Word is that the Pegulas have come to form a close relationship with Buffalo Bills President Russ Brandon and will keep him on. Many fans won’t care how much he likes Brandon they will want him gone for one reason. The reason is that Brandon and General Manager Doug Whaley stated that they believe they are going to be a playoff team.

“They should. We haven’t done anything. We’ve got a lot to prove,” Whaley said back in July. “It is what it is. Like Russ said, ‘We won’t hide from it.’ We haven’t been in the playoffs in a long time and we owe it to the fans, our late Hall of Fame owner and everybody in this business to show that we’re not the Bills anymore. We want to be a playoff team. We’re planning to be a playoff team and that’s our goal.”

Buffalo isn’t a town that will tolerate people in power not delivering on promises. We heard former Buffalo Sabres owner John Rigas state that he was going to give the team the tools to finish the job after they lost in the Stanley Cup Finals to the Dallas Stars. Rigas never delivered on that promise and fans haven’t forgotten it.

There are two other reasons that will make it hard to keep people on which is the team’s inability to find a franchise quarterback and the terrible drafting in the first round of the NFL Draft.

Brandon has been with the Bills since 1997 and every year since then the team hasn’t had a franchise quarterback. Of the 19 first round draft picks taken by the Bills since 1997, only four players have made the Pro Bowl as a Bill. More than half of those have been while he has been the main person in charge since 2006 which is 11.

Now, of those 11 only two have made the Pro Bowl in running back C.J. Spiller and defensive tackle Marcell Dareus. Spiller’s play since making the Pro Bowl has gone downhill to the point where the Bills will unlikely resign him.

So, if the Bills don’t win both of the next two games you can expect some drastic measures to be taken by the front office in order to save their jobs.

According to WGRZ, Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula is interested in buying the Buffalo Bills. With that news it’s pretty clear that Pegula is now the favorite to become the next owner of the Bills.

The reason that Pegula is the clear favorite isn’t what you think. No, it’s not due to the fact that Pegula that the company he founded in East Resources, Inc. sold 75,000 acres of land for $1.75 billion. Don’t get me wrong that does help his case, but what will clinch it for him is something much more simple.

What I’m talking about is the four members of the trust that was established when Ralph Wilson died. The four members are Mary Wilson, Jeff Littman, Mary Owen and Attorney Eugene Driker, which was first reported by All Sports WNY. Two of them are still employed by the Bills in Littman who’s the Bills CFO and Treasurer of the Ralph Wilson Equity Fund and Owen who’s the Vice President of Strategic Planning.

Seriously, who in their right mind is going to hand over ownership of the team to someone that is just going to turn around and fire them?

What’s going to happen is that the trust will find an owner who is going to keep the team here, won’t clean house and keep business as usual. That owner is clearly Pegula who demonstrated just that when he bought the Sabres as the only change he made then was the hiring of Ted Black as president since the position was vacated when ownership changed to his control.

People forget that Wilson, Littman and Owen have been a part of this community for many years and have established friends and relationships with others in the community. Many of their friends are also Bills fans as well. So, you’re telling me that they will just take the highest bidder and turn around to their friends, look them in the eye and say sorry after the next owner takes control and announce they are moving the team.

In the end what will happen is that Pegula will be sold the team and the Bills will then spin the announcement as a great day for WNY as the team is staying and its business as usual.